For a number of months we've been having the misnamed "Southampton Pi Interest Group" meetings in Winchester. So the time has come for a name change. Based on the folks who turned up last month it's now called the "Southampton, Winchester, Andover & Basingstoke Pi Interest Group". Which is too long a name for all practical purposes.

So I've shortened "Southampton, Winchester, Andover & Basingstoke Pi Interest Group" to "SWABPiIG" which is catchy (if you work that way) and has images of strange things done in farming (if you think that way). But, it just fits better and can be a Twitter hashtag #SWABPiIG.

We've been meeting in the Roebuck Public House, Stockbridge Rd, Winchester every second Wednesday. There was a slight hiccough this month (pub was closed) - so the venue may change (watch this space).

This is a no-booking required event. Just turn up. It's just a chance to sit round a table with a beer and a Raspberry Pi (yes we do have live running Raspberry Pis) and chat about projects/experiments/the forum/etc (no restrictions, it even doesn't have to be about Pis) that have been done in the preceding month.

There's no agenda (unless you want one or have a very specific problem that needs to be fixed). There's no entry fee (except the price of a beer (or drink of your choice)). The venue will have FREE WiFi (so you can get your Raspberry Pi and/or laptop online).

The next SWABPiIG meeting is: 8th October at 20:00 at the Roebuck (subject to confirmation).

I may no longer live in Winchester (Vancouver Island these days) but I remember fondly my residence there. Greetings from an ex-wintonian - have fun! In fact where I live seems so like winchester area - weather, population, house prices - that I tend to explain it as 'Winchester Extremely West'.

geoff1234 wrote:There are a number of Winchesters around the world but only one original WINCHESTER in Hampshire England

That's the one; I lived there '84-91, working as an IBM Research Fellow at the UK Scientific Centre. I even got to make a flying visit this summer after the European Smalltalk User Group conference in Cambridge; my goodness the town centre has got filled in and busy and a bit tacky even. But the cathedral grounds are still nice and the countryside is still pretty.

Making Smalltalk on ARM since 1986; making your Scratch better since 2012

I have noticed that the Raspberry Pi foundation has released a new version of NOOBS (v1.4.2) on 24 Sep 2015. Amongst other things, it provides a GUI for setting up the original configuration such as enabling/disabling overscan and setting the time zone. Despite what is implied elsewhere, this does not automatically appear in the appropriate menu after a Sudo apt-get update and upgrade of a previous version. It is not difficult to re-install the entire Raspbian OS from the latest NOOBS. This I have done on some of my other Pi s including the Pi 2 connected to the new 7" touchscreen.
When re-installing the OS via NOOBS, the touchscreen does not display the NOOBS dialogue. (It obviously needs the OS for its drivers.) It is necessary to first update the OS on the memory chip using a Pi connected to a standard HDMI monitor.
I note that the interface to a WiFi dongle is now simpler, asking for the appropriate password for the network discovered.
I shall bring along my touchscreen and its Pi 2 next Wednesday to see how easily it connects to the Roebuck's WiFi.
One more point - the NOOBS installs the latest version of LibreOffice. Unfortunately, it defaults to US spelling in its menus. To correct this, simply run "Sudo apt-get install libreoffice-l10n-en-gb" in the terminal.

Further to observations made at our last meeting, particularly concerning the new 7" touch screen:

I noticed that the display screen seemed to be upside down compared to when I first tried it out. Apparently, this was a deliberate intention by the Raspberry Pi officialdom who considered that it was easier to use the screen with the power supply connectors at the bottom and updated the driver files to suit.

When I ran Ubuntu MATE, the display came on with the original orientation. I also noticed that the touch facility did not work. According to Raspberry Pi, there is no support for Ubuntu MATE with the 7" touch screen (yet?).

For those wishing to try Ubuntu MATE by transferring the downloaded .img file to a memory stick using dd on a terminal, it is easier to edit the config.txt file on the stick to un-comment the overscan disable instruction before booting up thereby avoiding the black border on the screen when Ubuntu MATE does start up.

Incidentally, the new Pimoroni stand for the Touch Screen expects the orientation to be as originally designed (with the power connector at the top). The workaround to restore the orientation is to insert the line:

lcd_rotate=2

in the file: /boot/config.txt

This allows Ubuntu MATE to appear the correct way up when using the stand.

No doubt we will be meeting in the Roebuck thus evening - 20:00 for those who can get there on time.
Raspberry Pi have released a new version (v1.7) of NOOBS last Tuesday (9-02) for those who like to keep up-to-date.